“Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.” (Psalm 62:5)
I don’t know how other past counselors have felt (and I am sure they agree), but staff training has been terribly tiring. While the 2017 summer staff has been trained on camp safety and policies, learned new games to play and lead, taken extremely heavy water equipment down the long beach trail, taken part in Christian Formation, and a plethora of other tasks, all last week, the staff were split into two groups and either trained in the Adventure Course or lifeguarding; this week includes more intense training as well. Everyone just seems to be pooped and sore (or as our UK staff says, “A little achey.”).
It is not that our camp coordinators simply do not like us and wish to give us more than we can handle, but that there is a great responsibility on the staff once camp begins. This responsibility is to keep the campers safe every second of the day, build life skills in the campers, and simply allow them to have fun. More than anything else, this responsibility also includes each staff member ministering to every incoming camper so they might know and love the Lord more. This sounds pretty tough. This sounds like a lot of responsibility. It seems to be more than we as counselors can handle. I think to myself, “Can we be trusted with all this responsibility?” Yes, we can. A wise mentor once told me, “If I did not trust you, I would not train you. I already trust you so I will train you. And once you are trained, I can trust you even more.”
The camp staff has much responsibility on their shoulders, but knowing that our directors and coordinators want to train us (and have to regardless) gives us all the more encouragement to work harder in our training and with our incoming campers. The trust and constant encouragement of our directors and coordinators through every step of training has refreshed us (though a nice day off will be helpful too!). Most of all, the Lord has been strengthening and pulling us through; we could never be thankful enough. Basically, the Camp DeWolfe staff is ready and absolutely excited for our incoming campers. Even though we are a little “achey,” we are not groaning because we are tired. We are groaning for camp to hurry and start! As one of our UK staff said, “It’s gonna be the bee’s knees!”
Peter Vang
Christian Formation Director
Camp DeWolfe Summer 2017
P.S. – Having many staff of different backgrounds (our UK and Polish staff specifically) is a blessing because it gives a wide range of diversity as well as fun. I am sure our campers will be in awe of their accents!